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Blog: Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop - October 31, 2015

Bruce Tremper

Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop 2015 - October 31, 2015

The Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop (USAW) was yet another smashing success with over 600 attendees and 29 commercial exhibits. Each year, USAW provides critical, continuing education for both professionals and the public with attendees and presenters from across the Intermountain West. The chief organizer and MC, Craig Gordon, wore his usual tuxedo, combined with the energy that only Craig can deliver.

Because USAW evolved from being a continuing education seminar just for professionals, it features talks with more interest for professionals in the morning and public talks in the afternoon. Next season, we may follow the format offered by all of the other regional, fall workshops in other parts of the country and feature only continuing education talks of interest to the public for the entire day. You can view videos of the public talks if you scroll down and click on the links with each description below.

To start out the morning session for professional avalanche workers, Ethan Greene, Director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, gave a spellbinding overview of an Avalauncher accident and recent work doney CAIC and CDOT to improve worker safety. It included a cool video testing blast wall designs with liquefied aluminum showering outward from the blast into the wall, which apparently occurs when a round explodes within the tube.

Matt Jeglum from the University of Utah Department of Atmospheric Sciences presented: El Nino/La Nina-What it means for snow in Utah and other areas of the West. As usual neither El Nino nor La Nina have any correlation to the climate of northern Utah, and everyone needs to be reminded seemingly every year. However, the usual El Nino pattern--dry to the north and wet to the south--will likely affect others in the west.

Brett Kobernik from the Utah Avalanche Center presented a simple API (application programmer interface) to display weather charts from everyone’s local, automated weather stations.

Ian Reddell from Solitude talked about how they adjusted avalanche terrain management strategies for our record setting low snow winter last season and strategies we all may employ in the future if our winters continue their warmer pattern.

Spencer Storm from Snowbird presented their Weather and data collection program in Mineral Basin and Mary Ellen Gulch, an area they plan to expand in future years.

Marie Pate Taylor talked about Applying Smart Zoning in Avalanche Terrain-Through zoning and smart land use practices, local authorities and private landowners can work together to reduce new construction in avalanche areas.

Brian Gorsage from the Wyoming Department of Transportation presented a talk on Gazex and O'bellx installation -An internal installation of progressive avalanche mitigation systems.

The amazing Doug Richmond, Patrol Director from Bridger Bowl in Bozeman talked about Non-result Avalanche Control Events -Uncertainty and the persistent weak layer in the ski area operational setting. Delivered with his characteristic, homespun vernacular and talent of explaining complex phenomena in simple ways, Doug did a fabulous job of reinforcing for the newbies, that low probability – high consequence avalanches can be very tricky to forecast, such as deep persistent slabs and wet slabs.

Finally, Tim Hendrickson with Mountain Guard talked about Litigation in the Ski Industry -Highlighting the importance of avalanche mitigation documentation and how it’s used during a claim.

The afternoon public session started with the Utah debut of our cool, new update of the Know Before You Go avalanche video we’ve been working on for the past year. We produced it in partnership with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and Avalanche Canada. This video shows the potential for high budget, high production value videos for avalanche education. It’s been getting huge numbers of views since its release. You can see it at https://vimeo.com/144545554

Following the video, there were talks by Craig Gordon on the history of the KBYG program and a talk by Jamie Musnicki from the American Avalanche Association on Education Levels Framework. You can view the video of Jamie’s talk at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rINikiK_yKE. (Because of sound issues, I could not capture Craig’s talk.)

There was a lively panel discussion on Social Contract-Trends in backcountry users and their level of responsibility to each other, featuring Drew Hardesty with UAC, Steve Scheid - USFS, Laurie Delaney - UDOT , Jay Pistono -Teton Pass Ambassador and Jon Schofield- Dawn Patrol Skier/Splitboarder. You can watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJvZ3DZn_U

The always-popular speaker, Jim Steenburgh with the University Department of Utah Atmospheric Sciences gave a great talk called: Climate Change and Variability: Snowy and Not So Snowy Projections for the 21st Century and the Winter of 2015–16. Cutting through the hype and taking a look at what we can and can't expect this winter and in the coming decades. Jim gave a great overview of what to expect from our future winter weather. In short, higher temperatures, higher freezing-levels and shorter winter seasons. But low elevations will notice the change is snow amounts more dramatically than high elevation locations. You can watch it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvXCS4WWEBE

Avalanche victims, - David Brown and Mike Hales told their tale called: Jaws Avalanche Accident Case Study-12.24.2014 -A summary of the Christmas eve slide in Jaws from both the victim and rescuers perspective of the events that led up to the avalanche, the ride, rescue efforts, and lessons learned. . You can view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU_a-7vBOnY

Blase Reardon with the Colorado Avalanche Information Center gave a great, human-factors talk. The title says it all: Magoo, Me, and You: Developing Expert Intuition in the Backcountry -Research shows that most of our decisions are unavoidably influenced or even determined by subconscious cognition. In the backcountry, this tendency often shows itself as heuristic errors or the illusion of skill. We can, however, develop expert intuition by relying on practices that increase feedback reliability and quality. You can view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vmYVI-QJEE

The well-known adventure athlete, Brody Leven gave one of his characteristically entertaining talks in his signature, polished style: Proceed with Caution: Traveling to Ski the World Without Avalanche Forecasts -While enticing to visit, most of the world's mountains don't have experts trying to keep you on top. Safely climbing and skiing objectives outside the forecast zones is possible. Brody Leven presents practical, real-world approaches to worldwide skiing.You can view the video of his talk at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0yM3-YYag

Finally, it was time to totter out the old geezer, me in this case, to yammer on about what it was like back in the old days. I retired this season after 29 years as the Director of the Utah Avalanche Center. I gave a retrospective of not only my nearly-40-year career as a professional avalanche worker, but I presented a family tree of avalanche knowledge in North America, plus how being a 4th generation Montanan—on both sides of the family—explains a lot about me, especially in the departments of stubbornness, pride, independence and other undesirable qualities. You can see the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0gwY-qFVI0

A playlist of all the talks is available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLszivd4ZqHnzbSXAJWYHTosq9o7CTnRwh

Comments
Thx, Bruce. I missed the workshop this year and now I can catch up on what I missed. Appreciate your efforts over the years. Enjoy retirement and I look forward to seeing posts and other "lanchey" related stuff by you.
Vicki Turner
Fri, 12/4/2015